Lolita (1962) on Netflix
Humbert Humbert, a European professor of French literature, takes a room in Ramsdale, New Hampshire. He becomes obsessed with Dolores, his landlady's young daughter, known as Lolita.
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- IMDb7.5/10117,214 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged professor of French literature, comes to Ramsdale, New Hampshire, to find a room for the summer, before he takes up a teaching post at Beardsley College in Ohio. Charlotte Haze, a widow, offers him lodgings in her house. He is ready to decline until he meets her young daughter, Dolores, whom everyone calls Lolita, and he is at once taken with her. Charlotte wants Humbert's company for herself, so she packs Lolita off to an all-girl summer camp. Once the house is empty, Charlotte writes him a letter: he must leave at once unless he agrees to marry her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lolita (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Marlon Brando fired Stanley Kubrick from One-Eyed Jacks in November 1958, so Kubrick issued a press release saying he was resigning 'with deep regret' to 'commence work on Lolita', but he went on to replace Anthony Mann on Spartacus instead, and Lolita did not go into production until 1960.
- James Mason was Kubrick and producer James B. Harris's first choice to play Humbert Humbert but declined at first because of a Broadway engagement, suggesting his daughter Portland for Lolita; Laurence Olivier turned the part down, apparently on his agents' advice.
- Jill Haworth was asked to play Lolita but was under contract to Otto Preminger, who said no; Hayley Mills was offered the role but her parents refused permission, and Joey Heatherton, Sandra Dee and Tuesday Weld were also candidates.
- A 2020 article by journalist Sarah Weinman alleged that producer James B. Harris had sex with Sue Lyon during the shooting of Lolita, when she was 14 years old.
- Kubrick said that pressure from the Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency meant he 'didn't sufficiently dramatize the erotic aspect' of Humbert's relationship with Lolita, and that he would have stressed it as much as Nabokov did if he could redo the film.
- Vladimir Nabokov is credited with the screenplay, though very little of what he wrote was used; his first draft ran over 400 pages, and producer Harris said, 'You couldn't make it. You couldn't lift it.'
- Much of the money to finance Lolita was raised in England on the condition that it be spent there, so Kubrick shot the exteriors in England; Humbert's drive through an 'American mid-west town' was filmed on Grover Road in Oxhey Village near Watford.
- With Nabokov's consent, Kubrick moved the novel's ending to the start of the film, admitting it sacrificed a great ending but helped hold interest, since he felt interest in the novel sagged after Humbert 'seduced' Lolita halfway through.
